| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Tin Woodman of Oz by L. Frank Baum: happened to find my old head in your cupboard, a while
ago, and certainly it is not as desirable a head as the
tin one I now wear."
"By the way," said the Tin Soldier, "what ever became
of my old head, Ku-Klip?"
"And of the different parts of our bodies?" added the
Tin Woodman.
"Let me think a minute," replied Ku-Klip. "If I
remember right, you two boys used to bring me most of
your parts, when they were cut off, and I saved them in
that barrel in the corner. You must not have brought me
The Tin Woodman of Oz |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: smoking at the doors of cafes, where there were flies and yellow curtains,
on the shady side of sleepy little squares. In spite of these pastimes,
which were mechanical and perfunctory, I scantily enjoyed my journey:
there was too strong a taste of the disagreeable in my life.
I had been devilish awkward, as the young men say, to be found by Miss
Bordereau in the dead of night examining the attachment of her bureau;
and it had not been less so to have to believe for a good many hours
afterward that it was highly probable I had killed her. In writing
to Miss Tita I attempted to minimize these irregularities; but as she gave
me no word of answer I could not know what impression I made upon her.
It rankled in my mind that I had been called a publishing scoundrel,
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: the spot, and would have tried to turn the conversation: but before
she could speak, some burgher's wife blundered out a commonplace
about the jealousy of Spanish husbands; and another, to make
matters better, giggled out something more true than delicate about
West Indian masters and fair slaves.
"Ladies," said Don Guzman, reddening, "believe me that these are
but the calumnies of ignorance. If we be more jealous than other
nations, it is because we love more passionately. If some of us
abroad are profligate, it is because they, poor men, have no
helpmate, which, like the amethyst, keeps its wearer pure. I could
tell you stories, ladies, of the constancy and devotion of Spanish
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: conclusion of our labours when we were stayed by a small lacuna in my
information. I did not know the circumference of the earth. The
landlord knew it, to be sure - plainly he had made the same
calculation twice and once before, - but he wanted confidence in his
own figures, and from the moment I showed myself so poor a second
seemed to lose all interest in the result.
Wendover (which was my next stage) lies in the same valley with Great
Missenden, but at the foot of it, where the hills trend off on either
hand like a coast-line, and a great hemisphere of plain lies, like a
sea, before one, I went up a chalky road, until I had a good outlook
over the place. The vale, as it opened out into the plain, was
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